Forgetting Vowels

By place9011, May 15, 2019

Sitting briefly in rooms as weekend guests
while the walls and furniture
faded with frequent overlooking

with being merely checked off
dust on window ledges noted
dim lamps losing their edges

pictures on the walls
retreat deeper into their frames
floors sag out of sight

we become those many
who read without vowels no longer needing
open-throated voices of agency
of gathering and sorting

who follow ruts in roadways
bleached trenches in sidewalks
made by consonant sounds of foot-falls
of the drag of sleeve against limb-swing
of the rasp of turning pages

What might have been called
out of mindful silence, out of
movements felt like fog but never heard

that would have leaped into doing, making
into a joyful grasp of what is on offer
beneath heavy winter coats of indifference
even in long-overlooked rooms

We visitors becoming familiars
are remaking rooms in our old images
a screened porch thundering in a sudden rainstorm
in a mock-liquid rattle dry at arm’s length